From the Classroom to the Stage: How Two Sisters Wrote a Play
There is something beautiful and a little magical about a family that creates together. The Socrates Sisters, Stephanie Rehm and Eleanor Daly, are writers, producers, and musical composers of a new play Detention, which will be premiering at the TK Fringe Festival this summer. For the longtime educators and first-time playwrights, the journey to this year’s Fringe Festival has been a full-on family affair. “We’re not a big troupe—it’s me, my sister, and our families together,” says Rehm.
I had a chance to meet with Rehm, the elder half of The Socrates Sisters, to chat about the joys and chaos of co-writing a play remotely, the growing list of pressures on today’s teachers, and Sam, her story’s main character. Rehm tells me, “She’s a creation who’s a bit more eccentric, more grandiose, a lot crazier. But I just love her.” And, honestly? You can tell.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with your name. I love it! Why ‘The Socrates Sisters’?
When we were little, we used to play a game with our dad. He called it ‘Socrates’. If we asked questions about anything, for example, “why is a plant called such and such?” He would use the Socratic method: “Well, why do you think?” “If you looked at that plant carefully, what name would you give it?” And so he introduced us to the Socratic method as a game, and that stuck with us, at least with me. It was a way of conversing and discovering the world, a way which was very ancient and philosophical at the same time. It was neat growing up with that. Also, Socrates is, of course, a central figure in Western thought, and he was punished for going against the doxa and going against what was expected and required of teachers. So there’s also an allusion to acts of resistance and that kind of nobility that accompanied his resistance to rigid authority.
About Detention, could you tell us what it is about?
My sister and I have both been educators for a long time, and we’ve seen a real shift in teaching culture throughout our careers. So this play is about that. We created a character who is very eccentric and passionate about teaching. She’s a composite of a lot of people we’ve known, but also completely fictional. This character is chafing against some of the changes that have happened in the realm of education. And she’s reflecting a lot on the constraints placed on teachers. Detention is used as a tool to modify behaviour. And this is a lot about how there’s invisible pressures brought to bear on teachers to modify their behaviour. And it’s about peering in through the keyhole and seeing the life of a teacher at home, in the classroom, seeing her vulnerabilities, but also witnessing her strength.
You are both long-term educators but new to playwriting. What is it about this period that made you want to write about this topic now?
Well, as you know, there have been so many changes that have happened. So many kinds of disruptions, like the pandemic, which has changed everything, AI, cell phones, and more competition than ever to get into prestigious schools. There are just so many new pressures brought on educators. And that’s happened in a really short time, I think. Social media is a big one. Teachers were under scrutiny before, but they could go home and hang up their hats and just have a life, whereas now there’s this constant surveillance. And the students are under it, too. They’re very brittle because of social media and everybody having a camera on them. All these have really changed the conditions under which we teach.
Could you tell me a bit about writing this play, especially with your sister?
Oh, it’s been wonderful. It’s been great. She and I were so busy raising kids and having careers, and looking after business, that we didn’t really make room for creating. We were deeply involved in theatre and drama, and performance as kids and teenagers, and then it fell away, because everything else took up that space. So since she retired, things opened up. And we said, ‘Okay, it’s time. It’s time for us to write this.’ It felt important. So we met every Sunday morning for the better part of a year.
Wow.
Yeah, to write the script. We wrote it over Zoom before we knew that it was going to go anywhere at all. We just placed our faith in good fortune, and it worked out wonderfully.
It has the energy of a full family production. I’m so curious to know, how is being on set with your family?
Well, we do a lot together as a family. We’re a musical family. My husband’s a front man of a rock band, and my son is also [a] front man… I was in a band for about four or five years as a bassist and singer. We’re used to playing music together. That’s what we do for fun. We like to create together. I’m recording a piece for this [play]. I laid down the bass track a couple days ago. And when my son comes back from his rotation for work, he’ll lay down the guitar track. And his partner is doing the props. She’s fabulous. And then my sister and her family. She’s calling on friends and family to do some voice work. It’s quite a thrill for us to just get everybody involved.
Without giving too much away, what do you hope your audience takes away from the show?
I hope they find it to be a thrilling story. I think everybody knows that the job of a teacher is hard, but I’m not sure everybody understands what that really looks like. So, I’m excited, because we really worked on the light in the dark, we’re working on some comedy too. So hopefully, people will laugh at the funny parts, and that full three-dimensional humanity will come across. I hope that’s what’s going to happen.
Stephanie Rehm is the elder of The Socrates Sisters. She has been teaching in the field of higher education for over thirty years. She is a published poet and essayist who writes music and plays the electric bass in her spare time. This is The Socrates Sisters’ first play.
‘Detention’ runs daily from August 12-17, 2025 at the Davies Lounge for the TK Fringe festival as part of The Kick & Push Festival. More information about the festival and tickets can be found here.
